Trying to make sense of my own Sociological Imagination

Tag: Research

The decision to do a PhD over and EdD may seem strange given the recent post I made focusing on the benefits of an EdD and showing a slight sway towards this from my original PhD plans. I thought it would be useful to write a short blog to explain why.

I do not plan to rehearse the same arguments as I made in the previous post but to summarise, the two main benefits I saw in the EdD are the presence of a cohort for informal support, the structure to help retain focus during a part time doctorate.

It just so happened that I was put in a enviable position of being able to choose between and EdD and a PhD at the same institution on the same topic, so really this left little to choose from other than the model of delivery. This possibly made it harder than having external factors to shape my choices.

What became clear as I worked through my choices and came up with pros and cons is that both models are good and neither seemed to race ahead from the other in my thinking. What did however shape my final choice was me and my own background and circumstances.

The main differences in essence are that the EdD would have a shorter thesis but with several assessed formal assignments on research methods, policy and theory in the first 3 years. The PhD has a longer thesis but no formal assignments. In terms of an EdD there would be a cohort of at least 10 students all starting the journey together whereas by reading a PhD I would be likely to be one of a much smaller number in the department. Because of my circumstances both would be part-time and both have similar financial implications for me.

After talking to several academics who know me well and a couple I have met on one off occasions, much of what I have been doing over the last few years seems to be developing some of those skills needed for doctoral study. Reading around my interest areas, engaging with theory, attending conferences and building support networks. Given that I have already begun this journey, some of the structure offered by the EdD might have felt slightly restrictive and limited the start I could make from day one. This would also have a knock on effect on giving me more time and space for the data collection phase of my research which, when studying part time, may end up being very important.

In not choosing an EdD, however, I am acutely aware of those parts of the training model that may be lacking and the gaps I need to fill myself, such as the support network that a cohort would provide. I do wonder though if there is a way to re-create this through technology and am working through some ideas of how to do this for maximum benefit.

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The divide between the practicalities of the classroom and the world of academic research is not a new one and is one of the things I find particularly problematic about educational research. The previous labour government tried to increase the value placed on research by teachers by encouraging Masters level study by providing funding for it. This is something that has now more or less all dried up. In fact if you want to study a Masters in Education in 2013/14 you are looking at £4500+ with little hope of funding. Given that few schools pay any more for teachers with Masters degrees where is the incentive?

Strangely, some teachers do still want to study at a higher level and understand more about why interventions and policies are effective or not. I am one of those. I managed to gain some credits from my PGCE but it still cost me £2500 to study the remaining modules for my MEd (which I have just submitted the final assignment for). I have learned a few things but here is where the problem lies.

There is no time allocated in a normal teaching load to continue to pursue any research activities. Yes, I can try things, use some of the theory I learned to develop my own practice but if I want to continue to conduct more in depth research into my own practice that adds to the academic literature then that’s for my own time. Hardly a way to encourage practitioner research is it?

What has prompted this blog post though is the British Educational Research Association’s (BERA) annual conference. Scheduled for, you guessed it, the first week of a new academic year for teachers in primary, secondary and further education. Also the first week of many PGCE programmes. To me, this shows how divorced parts of the academy are from their coalface of education. Yes, conference fees are not cheap but you know what, had it have been scheduled in the 6 week school break, I probably would have paid to attend (and I can’t be the only one!).

What is particularly ironic is that the conference coincides with the publication of Why Educational Research Matterswhich states that “Educational research is necessary for the advancement of knowledge for education and of education”. Hardly the best way when very few individuals involved with using the research presented to inform their practice can attend the annual conference of the association which should be helping encourage and promote the link between the academy and practitioners.

I strongly believe educational research DOES matter but a there needs to be a reconsideration of how to address the issues that divorce it from classrooms. One start would be to schedule BERA2014 so it was actually accessible to teachers and educational practitioners and furthermore if BERA really do see educational research as being so important then maybe they need to start explaining to Policy makers why providing time and space for practitioners to be able to get involved in research is imperative!

Edited: What makes it worse is that they have already scheduled 2014 and 2015 according to their website – both in September!

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Following last weeks Blog post on the need to re-imagine reality TV, I have began to work through the excellent Live Methods Sociological Review Monograph. Some of the issues and questions it is raising about the need for a live sociology also seem to resonate with my own thoughts I began to explore last week on how Sociology needs to work to engage publics in a more meaningful and accessible way. Les Back’s excellent chapter on Live Sociology has provided much of the stimulus for me to examine my initial arguments further. In Back and Puwar’s previous chapter, ‘A manifesto for live methods: provocations and capacities’, they highlight Sociology’s responsibility to ‘vulnerable and precarious lives’ (2012, p.14) and its ethical responsibility to society. I argue that this is a strong justification for the subsumption of the reality TV model to enable publics to have access to a more realistic and open representation of those communities they turn the lens on opposed to the current dramatised and pathologised view that is forced upon them.

Back argues within the chapter for making more accessible sociological texts and for re imagining research outputs through multimedia platforms and other forms of presentation that may cross the boundaries with Art. He argues that online formats have the potential of global reach and have the ability to combine sound, image and text. Whilst I agree and this is certainly a distinct move forward from the limitations of printed text within the journal or monograph, if we are to address the aims of making sociology more accessible to publics, especially those who may be vulnerable and marginal, we need to examine how to reach them more carefully.

Whilst a broader the range of outputs has the ability to engage different publics with Sociology’s project, I think care needs to be taken to attend to the inequalities intrinsic within the consumption of these forms of output. By focusing upon the digital and the gallery, we exclude many of those to whom the research is most relevant. I am not arguing that we shouldn’t explore these avenues of research output, but that we need to consider more carefully which research outputs have the power to reach those whom we have the duty to help understand the truths about the social world within which they live.

As Back states, ‘journalistic exposé and reality TV […] occlude and hide what is at stake in the detail’ (2012, p.25) so is it not Sociology’s duty to expose and foreground that exact detail and to make it accessible to those publics who are currently only exposed to the partial representations of current offerings?

The more I consider this issue, the more I feel that the current state of academic sociology is missing out on part of its duty and now is the time the public’s Sociological Imagination needs to be ignited through refocusing their voyeuristic desire away from the dramatic, surface level representations they are currently exposed to a deeper sociological understanding of the world around them. One in which they can begin to see the fascination with the social world that Sociologists are already keenly aware of. The ideas of an accessible Sociology are nothing new, In fact Back draws upon Albion Small’s Essay from 1895 entitled The Era of Sociology to make the point that even as early as this essay in the first edition of the American Journal of Sociology, academics such as small were already reflecting on the need for translation of ‘Sociology into the language of ordinary life’ (cf. Back, 2012 p.21). Yet, as Back highlights much of the published materials since fall far short of this goal. Furthermore, I would go on to argue that the goal of translating sociology into ‘language of ordinary life’ by Small in 1895, should not only be considered in its most literal sense of using accessible language, but should be further considered in terms of the modes in which Sociology is disseminated.

As Mills wrote in the Sociological Imagination:

It is not only information that they need- in this Age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason that they need- although their struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy. What they need, and what they feel they need is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves (1959 [1970], p.11)

I argue, therefore that it is Sociology’s duty to use the vehicles of more public media outlets in a way in which it not only informs, in a way that not only explains, but in a way that helps publics to develop their own ways to explore those issues that occur within their own lives by giving them access to their own Sociological Imagination. I will end on an invitation to take up, or to challenge the ideas I put forward because what is needed now is the dialogue to continue. Only by continuing the conversation of what Sociology needs to do to engage publics can we ever have a chance of breaking down the barriers created by traditional output methods.

References

Back, L., (2012), ‘ Live sociology: social research and its futures’ in Back L. and Puwar, N. (eds.) Live Methods, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell/ The Sociological Review

Back, L. and Puwar, N., (2012), ‘A manifesto for live methods: provocations and capacities’ in Back L. and Puwar, N. (eds.) Live Methods, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell/ The Sociological Review